About the Book

Buildings and their surrounding spaces influence the collective identity of an urban population. In turn, images of buildings in paintings and other artwork can reveal much about the character of a city.
This richly illustrated text focuses primarily on Rome, Assisi, Siena and Florence from circa 1250 to circa 1390. It addresses four key issues in the study of change in architectural imagery and urban identity: 13th century Roman painting and its importance for 14th century painting in Tuscany; the Tuscan-Byzantine relationship from the mid- to late 13th century; “naturalistic” representation of medieval painting; and the meaning behind some of the stylistic changes that coincided with the bubonic plague in the 14th century.

About the Author(s)

Felicity Ratté is a professor of art and architectural history at Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont. She teaches across the field from the ancient to the modern periods. The particular focus of her work currently is comparative urban design and use in the medieval and modern cultures.

Bibliographic Details

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vList of Illustrations ixIntroduction 1

1. Rome Rebuilt: Architectural Imagery and the Revival of Medieval Rome 17
“Reconstructing” Medieval Rome and Its Art 18
The Sancta Sanctorum and the Image of Rome 24
Thirteenth-Century Restoration of St. Paul’s and the Pilgrim Experience 33
The Portico at St. Peter’s 41
The Artistic Environment in Rome and Beyond at the End of the Thirteenth Century 47
Stylistic Diversity in Thirteenth-Century Rome 48

2. Byzantium Bypassed: Architectural Images and the Rejection of the Maniera Greca c. 1300 59
The Arena and the Kariye Compared 63
Italian and Byzantine Artistic Currents and Interchange 69
Inventing the “Maniera Greca” Relations between Byzantium and Italy, Artistic and Otherwise 77

3. Picturing Places: Trecento Painting and the Emergence of the “Architectural Portrait” 91
The Pilgrim Experience at Assisi 92
Memory Techniques and the Architectural Portraits 100
Assisi, Rome and Pilgrimage in the Late Thirteenth Century 105
Changes in Portraiture Form in the Fourteenth Century 108
Conclusion 117

4. The Celebrated City: Civic Ritual and the Language of Architectural Imagery, 1300 to 1340 119
Images of Architecture and Real Buildings 122
Continued Presence of Conventional Ways of Representing Architecture 144
Ritual Life in Early Trecento Florence and Siena 152
The Symbolic Role of Architecture in Ritual Life 155

5. Crisis and Convention: Change in Architectural Imagery in the Second Half of the Fourteenth Century 162
Changes in Images of Architecture 165
Civic Experience in the Second Half of the Century 183